Benwick, and the death of Gawain

Arthur takes the army to France and besieges Lancelot at Benwick, and Lancelot will not come out. He is asked repeatedly by his own household why he does not fight, and his answer is always the same: he will not make war on the king who made him a knight.

Gawain rides to the gates daily and shouts for him. Eventually Lancelot is shamed into single combat, twice. Gawain has a gift — his strength increases for three hours toward noon — and Lancelot, knowing it, simply defends himself and covers up until the hour passes, and then puts him down. He does not kill him. Both times he steps back and lets him live, and both times Gawain, on the ground, tells him that he will never yield and to come back and finish it.

Then the letters arrive from England. Mordred has produced forged evidence that Arthur is dead, has himself crowned at Canterbury, and is preparing to marry Guinevere.

The army sails home. Mordred meets them at Dover with an army of his own, and in the fighting on the beach Gawain is struck on the old wound Lancelot gave him, and it kills him.

He dies writing a letter. It is addressed to Lancelot, and Malory gives it in full: Gawain names himself the cause of his own death, says the wound was of Lancelot's hand and that he sought it, forgives him entirely, and begs him to come back over the sea and visit his tomb — and to come with his knights and rescue the king, who is full straitly bestad with a false traitor, his own son.

The man whose grief drove the whole war spends his last hour trying to undo it, and it is too late by about three weeks.